What is a "Codec"

"compressor/decompressor"

 

A codec is a piece of software that can compress and decompresses media files. Codec programs are required for your media player to play any media that is compressed. This also applies to many devices for example TV sets, DVD players, tablets and mobile phones that play compressed meia. The most commonly known CODEC is MP3. Without this compression media files can be very large.

 

MP3

The MP3 was adopted as a standard in 1991. Mp3 is a lossy codec and hence looses quality.The codec was around earlier than that. MP3 usually are about a 1/10 of the original music source.


FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Very similar to MP3 but there is no loss in the compression so lossless, meaning that audio is compressed without any loss in quality. FLAC decoding is pretty fast among lossless codecs and it has one the fastest encoding mode.When you play an audio CD the audio data are read  at a rate of approx 1400 kilobits per second.

Video files are large, and 4K video is very large. In raw format will require approximately 48Mb/s download bandwidth. These files can be difficult to download or stream across the Internet quickly. Codecs can compress the files and amke it easier to download etc.

 

VP9 is a video codec that can compress video files to half the size that the current encoding technology, called MPEG-4 or H.264, can achieve. More importantly, it will be used to compress video files and streams at 4K resolution, which is four times higher than HDTV resolution. VP9 is part of WebM, an open-source project sponsored by Google for creating technology for use with media on the Internet. Google has announced plans to use VP9 for 4K YouTube videos. 

 

If you use Chrome to play a youtube 4k video, right click anywhere inside the video picture and use stat for nerds to see technical info.

 

HEVC, is another codec for 4K TV. 

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). HEVC is a successor to the well known H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard. HEVC is said to double the data compression ratio compared to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC at the same level of video quality.

 

Windows10: 

Microsoft will support the relatively new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) video compression standard in Windows 10 out of the box, according to a statement from Gabriel Aul, the leader of its Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals Team.

 

XAVC

XAVC uses level 5.2 of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC which is the highest level supported by that video standard.

XAVC can record 4K resolution at 60 fps with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling at 600 Mbit/s.

 

Video data calculator. You will need to adjust to your need ie fps, video bit (8,10,12 etc), resolution etc